We want all the details. Tell us how you mastered the delicate balance between powerful storytelling, relationship building, reputation management and more to create an impressive media relations strategy across multiple channels. How did you analyze media trends to generate more clicks, shares and coverage?

The 2018 Media Relations Awards are here to celebrate your ability to remain calm in the face of a crisis, your willingness to think beyond the standard press release and your dedication to sharable storytelling. Gain recognition for the accomplishments that made a difference for your customers, your clients or your team.

Don’t feel confined to one category. We encourage you to submit any campaign to as many categories as you’d like.

These awards are open to in-house, agency and independent communication practitioners in the private, corporate, nonprofit and government sectors. Enter your work or the work of your organization, or submit entries on behalf of a client.

Organizations from around the world are welcome to enter; however, entries must be submitted in English.

This year’s program is open to any work in media relations executed from Feb. 15, 2017 through Feb. 7, 2018.

Contact Justine Figueroa to find the perfect category for your campaign or project. You can reach her at 312-960-4304 or justinef@ragan.com.

Deadlines/Entry Fees

Early Bird Deadline:March 9, 2018 (Save $50 per entry!)

Late Submission Deadline: June, 2018

Main category entry pricing: $395 per entry

Grand Prize category entry pricing: $495 per entry

A late fee of $100 per entry was added to all entries received after 11:59 p.m. Central time, April 4.

Early-bird submissions must be received by 11:59 p.m. Central time on March 9 to receive the $50 discount.

One complimentary registration to any Ragan event, webcast or conference within 12 months of winning

Publicity for your campaign, project or organization through a Twitter chat guest spot or Facebook Live interview

The winners of the Grand Prize categories also receive a one-year membership to Ragan Training—a premium online training library featuring hundreds of hours of the very best content from Ragan events. Find out more about the site here: http://ragantraining.com/.

Categories

Brand Messaging or Positioning

We want to know how you propelled your organization’s reputation forward. How did you set your brand apart from its competitors and create buzz? Did you see an increased response from the media? Tell us about the intricacies of your brand campaign and how you got your story out into the world.

Cause Marketing Campaign

Tell us how you’re contributing to causes that matter and raising the public profile of the issues that you care about. Give us the details about your campaign strategy. Did you face a challenge when trying to raise awareness? What tools did you use to get past them? Share your campaign and results.

Crisis or Reputation Management

You’re the Olivia Pope of crisis communications. You remained cool under pressure and de-escalated a chaotic situation. How did you mitigate a potential media disaster to keep your organization’s reputation in good standing with the public? Tell us about the crisis and how you bounced back using the help of the media.

*NEW!* Exclusive Content Strategy

You found media relations success without wide distribution. Tell us how the lure of exclusivity made your strategy a success. Did you provide an exclusive to one media outlet or seek to drive traffic to a single platform? Tell us about your strategy and what made it a success.

Executive Visibility

Your high-level executives are the face of your brand. How do you train senior executives to personify and amplify your message? Who are you putting out there? We’re looking for campaigns that don’t merely “humanize” executives. We want to see campaigns that bring to life unforgettable real personalities—and tie them to organizational goals.

Global Media Relations

Your message reached out far and wide. We want to know how you gained the momentum to take your brand international. How does your message cross geographical boundaries? How do you make your message relevant and interesting where you live and useful to those across oceans? What was your story? Where did it travel?

Governmental or Public Affairs Media Relations

How and why did you collaborate with the media to meet governmental or public affairs goals? How did your relationship help you engage with your local community? Share how you developed this relationship and how it benefitted your organization. How did you educate the public about your group or its policy?

Innovation in Media Relations

Are you tired of taking the same ineffective, repetitive route when it comes to your organization’s media relations strategy? How did you execute your vision for creating a new process, concept or slogan? What results did your idea produce that changed the way people or the media think about you or your product, service or cause? Show us.

Integrated Marketing Communications

How did you put together a well-coordinated mix of promotional messages that reinforced your brand awareness to the media? Did you use content marketing and storytelling in your media relations blitz? What were the results?

Media Relations Video

How did your team or organization master the art of video to reach a mass audience? How do you use images, stories and real people to tell the bulk of your stories? Do you keep it short and simple or do you create long-form videos? Did your videos incite action or use humor to educate? Show us, and tell us the story behind the screen.

New Product or Service Launch

Tell us how your PR department or client impressed the media with the launch of a new product or service. Describe the tactics and strategy and brag about how sweet the outcome proved to be.

Thought Leadership Campaign

Your organization is staffed by experts with a wealth of knowledge about your industry. How did you make sure that customers and competitors alike knew this? Did you place an op-ed in a local newspaper? Did a team member author a piece for a notable trade publication? Tell us how you used storytelling to prove your talent in a particular industry and brand your organization as an industry thought leader.

Pitch

The components of an impressive pitch are imagination, great writing and outstanding visuals. Did you write an email pitch with a perfect subject line followed up by a story hook so dramatic yet so concise that journalists, bloggers and influencers fell over themselves trying to find out more? Did your online press release set a record for click-thrus and average time on your website? Did your multimedia press release get shared hundreds of times on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn? Brag about it.

Press Event or Media Tour

Not only did you handle the chaos of a producing a live event, you thrived under the pressure and created an unforgettable experience. Tell us how you selected your guest list, promoted your event across channels and encouraged social media engagement. Give us the inside story on how you pulled it all together so that outstanding media coverage resulted.

Stunt or Special Event

How did your publicity stunt or special event directly or indirectly generate interest from the media for your client or highlight your message? What ideas inspired its creation? What led to its success? How did you measure results?

Use of a Celebrity or Personality

Tell us why you thought a celebrity or personality was the best spokesperson for your brand. Did you work with a local figure, an A-lister or someone in between? How did the media respond? How does your product or service reinforce the credibility of your celebrity, and vice versa? How did you turn that match into results?

*NEW!* Use of New Media Platform

Your organization is leading the charge on tackling media relations differently. Tell us about the new media platforms you capitalized on to get your name out there. Did you work with podcast hosts, vloggers or other new media outlets to share your brand story? Tell us all about it, and don’t forget the metrics.

Social Influencer Program

The right social influencer can have as much power as a well-known media outlet. Tell us how you scouted the perfect group of influential social media stars to raise your brand’s profile among a certain demographic. Did you reach out to mommy bloggers? Beauty gurus? Instagram-famous Chihuahuas? What metrics determined the ideal influencers? How did you entice them into becoming brand loyalists and public ambassadors? What were the results?

Social Media Campaign

We want to see evidence that you built a publicity campaign aimed at the reporters, influencers and bloggers on your social media channel or channels. Explain why you chose your channels, what you hoped to do, the results, lessons learned and the effect on your organization internally. We’re interested in hearing the whole story.

Grand Prize

Media Relations Campaign of the Year

We’re seeking well-rounded and robust campaigns that were a huge success. Share with us everything you did to reach the stars. Winners will be picked in each of these categories:

On the entry form, be sure to include a thorough synopsis explaining the purpose and scope of your project. We ask that the synopsis be at least 1,000 words (max: 1,250 words) and include the following sub-headings (when applicable):

Goals

Strategy and tactics

Execution

Evaluation: success, results or ROI

Be sure to follow the guidelines laid out in the category descriptions, as the judges will look for those elements when they select the winners.

You will be able to upload up to five additional documents to your submission. We encourage you to include press releases, design concepts, videos, analytics, testimonials and anything else you feel will give us a better sense of your project. Proprietary or internal information can also be attached and will not be shared with the public.

Supporting documents that can't be uploaded to the system should be mailed to: